Exsanguination Revisited
by Sparticus328
Summary: What happens when a drained Vampire is confronted with the one thing he wants most of all, but should never have? What happens when that Vampire is John Watson, and that forbidden craving is one Sherlock Holmes? Ties to "Exsanguination" by Shi-Toyu, after Chapter 13. Rating for brief language and descriptive violence.


_To all who read this, please begin by reading "Exsanguination" by Shi-Toyu ( s/9771045/1/Exsanguination). This began as a self-challenge based on the events of chapter 13 of that fic, while I waited in restless anticipation for the update. _

___In my own defense, some of the content here may not match up exactly with the mythology and history created by Shi-Toyu for Vampire-John... Some of my own tangent ideas may have sneaked in._

**Disclaimer: Sherlock (BBC) is the creation of Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss. "Exsanguination" is the brain-child of my fellow ff writer Shi-Toyu. I take no profit from this interpretation of events, and no credit for their genius. Only joy. **

_____Please read and enjoy. I welcome your reviews and comments._

* * *

John sat slumped in the cage, his eyes unfocused on a point near his left foot. He could still feel the hollow points where the needles had been, draining him...his wrists, at the crook of each arm, the instep of both knees, even at his neck where the carotid artery thumped painfully thin of blood.

The door to the lab opened quietly. It wasn't his captor, then. The French man usually let the door bang against the wall in his eagerness to sport some agony on the doctor. No, this was...John smelled the air... The familiar scent of soap and sweat, and a distant memory recalled the sulfuric smell of basalt and brimstone...Sherlock and a beast from hell.

He heard Sherlock approaching, heard the stifled gasp that escaped him. Elation lifted him from the drug-like stupor of blood-loss. But inside he screamed for Sherlock to get away.

The nearness of the detective's beating heart sent chills through John, chills that would dissolve to vapor with the warmth of just a taste.

The paper of the bindings fell away under Sherlock's fingers. The door of the cage opened easily, swinging wide to admit him. He reached forward his hand grazing John's shoulder.

John reacted instinctively. Whether it had been a move of primal defense to push his attacker away or an attack aimed at stunning his victim senseless, he didn't know. He could not identify a difference between the two.

When his brain caught up with his actions, John flashed across the room to where Sherlock lay, his mind reeling. Had he just...

The doctor gazed fixedly on a rivulet of blood leaking from a scratch at the detective's neck. When he had fallen, something must have caught his skin. He breathed in, his eyes closing at the heady scent of the iron-laced nectar. Hardly a second had passed, but it had been a small eternity to John. He bent his head, following the flavor on the air, to sink his protruding fangs into the exposure of flesh.

His body was ravenous for blood. Having been denied a meal for so long, he could not stop. His mind shouted for him to see reason, but even Sherlock's trembling gasps did nothing to coerce him. Sherlock's hands raised to the leathery gray skin of John's transformed face. Tears of pain pooled in the detective's eyes. His mouth moved, but no words escaped—only the wet gurgle of air escaping unnaturally through the wound in his throat.

Then, something slammed into his side, sending him hurtling off of Sherlock. He thanked the beast and despised it. John glared at the thing, watching as it shifted slightly—releasing the spatial compression which had eliminated the need for all three of the heads it now had.

"Cerberus." John hissed at the creature. It whined, petitioning its former master to recall himself. John lunged forward, still intent on the savor of Sherlock's blood. His thirst had not yet been sated. But the hell beast would not relinquish his guard over the detective.

Cerberus flew at John, latching on to one of his clawed hands with his teeth. He snarled, the hell-fire dripping from his frothing mouth to the floor of the lab. John's other hand slashed at the beast's sides, vainly attempting to dislodge it.

The fight did not last long. As soon as Sherlock's blood had circulated John's system, the thirst from his blood-loss had dissipated. He stood immobile for a moment, assessing his situation.

Cerberus growled once, still uncertain of John's intent. John patted the head of the beast. "Thank you, old friend. I have quite returned to myself." Cerberus let go of John's hand, limping aside to lap his injury.

An echoing crash tore the wall to pieces. John's eyes followed the debris to the source of the wall's destruction and recognized a familiar blonde head. Flamel.

His eyes were drawn to the blonde's opponent. The Frenchie.

How long had he been starved in that cage? How many days...weeks...had he been drained of his own life-giving essence to fuel the interests and experiments of that sadistic Frenchie? That same starvation leading him to do the one thing he swore to never do—take of Sherlock's blood.

John hissed after the criminal, his anger flaring anew. He pushed himself toward the chaos of clashing spells. He was lethargic, the blood having not completed its course in recovering him.

Cerberus barked, limping forward, stopping him. A faded memory surfaced. Not long enough ago, when John had once guarded the gates of hell, Cerberus had battled with him. Understanding struck John. He lifted the creature above his head and launched him across the room. Cerberus's jowls flapped in the air as he hurtled into the fighting pair, forcing them apart.

John flexed his neck, circulating the blood through his dormant veins, feeling it alter with his power and build. A cascade of heat flooded the corridor like a tidal wave. John stepped forward toward the fray, flexing his muscles into lithe weapons.

Sherlock's clouded eyes gazed at him. John approached, feeling a dull, reverberating thrum in his chest.

He watched as those eyes closed one final time.

* * *

The last bits of the wall connecting the foyer to the corridor fell with a crash.

John's eyes followed the dust as it swirled in the air, masking the ongoing fights from sight. The sounds of the battle collisions and snarls of the fighters were oddly hollow to his ears. He raised a hand to the side of his head, checking for possible physical damage to the appendage. It plied under his fingers, but was whole.

A rasping cry snapped him from the hazy, half-dream he had settled in.

"John! My God, do you realize what you've done?" Lestrade was gripping Sherlock's shoulders tightly, cradling his prone form.

John dropped to his knees before the inspector, ignoring the man in favor of the younger life-less detective. He bent closer to Sherlock's neck, inching his nose as near as he could manage. Lestrade's hands shoved at him, but the human strength did not compare with the power John held.

"What do you think you're doing?! Didn't you do enough? You drained him." The inspector gestured wildly around them. "You see all that? That's his!" John did look around, the puddle of dark red beginning to congeal in the cool air.

"No..." John rejected the idea. Surely, something else had done that...

John's thoat clenched, the thirst which had abated watered his mouth as he smelled the staleness of the blood—recognizing it for having come from Sherlock. He licked his lips, tasting the remnant there. His eyes burned. He stood up slowly, his shoulders hunched.

"Jesus Fucking Christ," Lestrade shrunk back, pulling Sherlock's dead body with him, for John was truly terrifying. The inspector swallowed hard. He gently set Sherlock's lifeless body on the floor, drawing his arms up on his chest, away from the bloody bath he lay pooled in. He stepped over the consultant and raised his fists to John. "Right then. Come at me."

John's brows twitched. Somewhere between watching Sherlock's eyes close and Lestrade's desperate petition for revenge, John's brain caught up.

"Greg, now's not the time to be combatting your friends."

"Friend?!" The disbelief and hurt was evident in the wavering pitch of the inspector's voice.

John did not reach his arms out to reassure the inspector as he would have. He doubted Lestrade would have accepted his gesture as such anyway. Instead, he ignored him, stepping around the pair of humans to enter the fray.

He knew that Benedicta was somewhere to his right, fighting her own battle. He knew he would not need to assist her, though. Cerberus was in the midst of the devils and demons, playing with them, biting at their legs and leaping at their throats, making short work of them.

And they had brought another friend. Bill must have reached them not long after John had been taken, he reasoned.

He caught Benedicta's eye. There was a glint of satisfaction in her expression just before she turned back to the demon she was fighting, slaying it in such a way it vanished—retreating to the void of cosmos from which it had been summoned.

John briefly closed his eyes. Yes, he'd been released. But, did she realize the cost? Did she know about Sherlock's rash decision, or the result of his monumental error?

Was she aware of what they had already lost in this fight?

John flexed his claws, his lip curling viciously. He had one opponent in mind, one aim for his vengeance.

He caught Bill's eye next. The fae's eyes were wide in recognition. He at least had seen John's bloodlust surface once before, back in Afghanistan when he had sequestered himself to the far reaches of the desert as a form of penance. Only then, John had been playing at being human, carefully keeping his vampire form from surfacing. The rage that Bill was witness to now showed him a different side of the doctor he had know in the war.

Bill returned to his own battle, grateful that John would not be an opponent he would need to face. He prayed that day would never come.

John loomed in the hall, his shadow seeming to grow in the confined space.

* * *

His focus was drawn to the last of the fights well underway. Flamel matched blow for blow with the killer. It was a well-matched fight, and could have gone on for an eternity, if the alchemist had not been so definably human. John pulled Flamel from the fight as the alchemist dipped from fatigue.

Flamel took in John's altered appearance and visibly shuddered. In three hundred years of knowing the doctor, the alchemist admitted, he had never seen him look so enraged. He peered down the length of the destroyed corridor to see the detective inspector kneeling defeatedly beside the consulting detective.

Ah, so he had died. He remembered Benedicta had cautioned him to keep an eye on the other man, that he was prone to rash actions and that his affections for John would remove even practical thought from his brilliant mind.

He glanced at John again. He had to admit, there was something to the doctor's feelings for the dead human. John had never gotten angry on his behalf before, not this angry by far.

John's eyes flicked to their opponent who glared wide eyed at his reconstituted condition. He shoved Flamel away.

"John!"

John deflected the attack the French man sent at Flamel. "Go! Help Sherlock. I'm sure you will recognize the symptoms."

"But-"

"Don't. I don't have the time or luxury to banter comically over your denial." The doctor snarled at the alchemist. "Go get me my detective!"

Flamel sighed, ducking away from the flying showers of explosions between John and his adversary.

"So, miraculous Healer, John von Hamish, thinks he can destroy me. _Malavise idee._" (Ill-judged idea.)

The speed with which John moved startled the magic-using vampire. The French man was flattened to the ground, pinned under John's knee. "I think that's a perfect idea, actually."

"That's not possible—_c'est impossible_! You should be near drained, and to weak to summon such strength!"

"You could never fathom the properties of a blood-borne power. Blessings, curses, charms, protections... You researched them, plotted the distinctions and identified your victims. But each time you took a life, you failed. You were no closer to recreating the Sorcerer's Stone." John's bitterness and loathing for the artifact and the procedures for its creation dripped from every word. "You came close once, when you caught the scent of a particular kind of blood. Francisco, imbued with the Healer's Blood. But you burned that option with your haste, draining him."

The French man pulled and squirmed trying to get up. John twisted his knee into the back of the killer's neck, feeling the vertebrae beneath the joint pop and separate under the pressure.

"Then for your final attempt, you took me. You threatened and harmed my own." John spat the words. "You caged me and slowly drained me." John lips pulled back in a cruel smile, "that's made someone very upset."

* * *

"Is he...?" Benedicta asked hesitantly. She stood with Bill off to the side while Flamel assessed the fallen detective.

Cerberus paced the floor. One of his dog's heads remained fixed on Sherlock, while another one was keeping tabs on the fight across the open space. John was battling the magic-using vampire. It seemed pretty one-sided, John having pinned the killer to the floor.

Flamel exchanged a look with the female vampire. Her mouth opened with stillborn words, her eyes watering. She clasped a hand over her mouth, holding back a sob. Bill wrapped an arm around her and, for once, she didn't shake him off.

"Sherlock," Lestrade said his name quietly.

Flamel looked at the inspector, a frown touching his face. He pursed his lips, disapprovingly. "No use mourning now. We're not without options."

Benedicta dropped her hand and stared at the alchemist, eagerly. "What do you mean?"

"I seem to remember these two humans having a uniquely non-human perception of the guests at my party." Flamel sat back on his heels, a hand going to his mouth in thought. "That only leads me to think that John...altered their perception...by way of a spell. A spell that requires magical blood. Blood which John has in spades."

Benedicta gasped in excitement.

"And was it not that same John who had drunk this poor man nearly dry?"

"Mostly, yeah." Lestrade had caught onto their optimism. "He bled out the rest of it."

"No. My dear Lestrade, even if a human body bleeds out on the street, they still retain some blood in their veins. Only a vampire or a special machine can fully exsanguinate a body. Sherlock simply does not have enough to reanimate him."

"Reanimate?" Lestrade hadn't quite followed, the supernatural still a bit outside of his ability to understand.

The alchemist stood up. "Yes. As I am sure John informed you, one of the dangers of sharing blood is that of turning. The turning is complete with the exchange of blood. Therefore, the only step remaining is Sherlock's revival. In order to do that, he needs more blood. Donations?"

* * *

_John lips pulled back in a cruel smile, "that's made someone very upset." _

"I'm sure you remember him. He shot you." The pride John felt in that moment surfaced, bringing a smile to his face. A smile that swiftly turned into an acidic glare. "He came for me."

The Frenchman glared up at John. A knowing simper touched his lips. "Oh, you killed him, then? Your love." The French man whispered tauntingly, "you have _murdered_ him."

"Shut up!" John roared, he took the French man's head in both of his hands and slammed it against the tiled floor.

He started to laugh, "Saint Sang has taken life. Young, vibrant, human life!"

John's arms trembled, his resolve faltering under the accusation. By all rights of the law, he should kill him then and there. Retribution for the murder of his spawn. But there was another to consider.

John felt the hum in the core of his chest again, deeper and heavier than the earlier dull tremor. It caught him off-guard. His eyes swung around to the gathering of his friends some distance away. They were huddled around Sherlock, he knew.

The French man took advantage of John's distraction, flipping him. He caught John's throat in his hand, kneeling on his chest to keep him in place. "One last addition to the formula, then my Stone will be prepared."

Then, a shadow fell over them. John's black eyes paled to their human hues. He recognized that form. He would know it anywhere.

The shadow swiftly became solid, as a hand latched on to the turf of the French man's hair and sliced razor-sharp talons through the killer's neck, severing the spine, and decapitating the offending vampire. The arterial spray coated Sherlock in the sticky slickness of blood. He turned his head disgusted by the thought of whose blood that was.

He tossed the head some distance away and peered down at John. "You always were too kind, John. Even to your enemies. You let him talk too long."

John sat up, shoving the headless body away. "I wanted justice, Sherlock. Justice cannot always be found in death."

"Justice for whom, John? Francisco? The Frenchie?" Sherlock pulled John to his feet. "The only justice in that is death. Like for like."

"I wanted justice for you."

"What did he do to me? Took you away, hurt you, bleed you near empty... If you want justice for me for his having done that to you, you should have killed him before."

"No. I wanted justice for what he made me do to you." John glared at the floor. Sherlock saw the tension in his neck, he was restraining himself...from something. The doctor finally looked up at the detective. "I killed you..."

"John," Sherlock chastised him, frowning. "I'm right here. And I am very much...not dead."

John sighed. "I never wanted you to be like me. I wanted you to stay perfectly human, as you were. I wanted to preserve that...innocence."

Sherlock smiled. "I have never been innocent, John. Just because the supernatural world was hidden to me does not mean that I would not have been exposed to it at some point, especially knowing you as I do now." Sherlock tipped his head forward, placing his forehead against John's. "I quite like knowing _all_ about you. And I am constantly finding that there is only more to learn."

John returned the smile, not disturbed in the least by the spray of blood covering the detective's face. He chucked a little at the memory it brought up, something about a harpooned dead pig.

Sherlock leaned away suddenly, pressing a hand against the center of his chest. "What is this?"

"Your chest." John supplied bluntly. He knew what Sherlock was referring to, but he preferred to keep the atmosphere light if he could.

"Don't be stupid. This tremble. It's like...a drum inside." Sherlock thought for a moment. The rumble in his chest had corresponded rhythm for rhythm to the chuckle John had emitted.

"It's a resonance." John answered, seriously this time. "It's part of the bond between sire and spawn. It's particularly strong right now because you're new. Over time, it may fade as you get used to this life."

He pressed his fingertips against his sternum, searching for the origin of the feeling. "Resonance," he repeated, trying out the word. He liked it. "Will we be like this...always?"

John looked to him, his face swiftly drawing down and away. "Only if that is what you want."

Sherlock stared at him. John was clearly uncomfortable with something. He thought about the contract he made with Udi. No time like the present... "I want for nothing else."

John gazed at him, not daring to hope. "You're sure? I can break a binding. There would be no commitment between us if... I would still teach you, of course." He shook his head, dispelling the clot of emotion sealing his throat, "But I cannot undo what I've made you."

Sherlock swept around him in an instant, his arms falling securely around his sire. "My idiot John. No. You are not allowed to break the binding. I want there to be a commitment between us."

John sighed, the tension from before melting away. His hands came up to grasp at Sherlock's, still holding tightly around him.

The detective leaned his temple against the top of the other man's head, chuckling gently. "I never would have thought that John von Hamish Watson would be so insecure." Sherlock took a breath, feeling...god, the sensation of it...the turmoil of emotions writhing inside his friend and sire. "I will be around for a very long time now, John. And I will be with you. I would never ask for any different."

~Fin~

Remember, I welcome your reviews and comments.


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